Push the Ball! Box Out! Zone! Did You Get All That, Viewers?

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Seton Hall Coach Tony Bozzella during a game against Rutgers this month. He and Coach Joe Tartamella of St. John’s wore microphones when their teams met on Friday during a commercial-free telecast on Fox Sports 2.CreditMel Evans/Associated Press

Steve Scheer is a basketball junkie. He had often fantasized about eavesdropping on a coach’s huddle during timeouts. The short, edited snippets on some telecasts were hardly enough to satisfy his appetite for access.

Unlike most fans, though, Scheer was in a position to fulfill his wish. As a senior coordinating producer for college basketball at Fox Sports, and a 37-year sports television veteran, Scheer’s suggestion for an all-access, commercial-free, live basketball telecast was able to become a reality.

On Friday, when St. John’s played at Seton Hall in a Big East Conference women’s basketball game, both head coaches wore microphones throughout a commercial-free telecast on Fox Sports 2. Viewers were able to hear not only what was said inside the huddle, but also the live interactions and directions from the sideline and the coaches’ talks inside the locker rooms at halftime.

It is believed to be the first time a network has provided this amount of unfiltered content in a live sports presentation. The one concession was that the game was broadcast with a five-second delay to censor any colorful language (though that did not turn out to be entirely effective).

“I’m as excited for this event as anything we’ve done this year,” John Entz, the executive producer of Fox Sports, said in a telephone interview before the game.

Early on, the broadcast sounded muddled as the announcers, Lisa Byington and LaChina Robinson, struggled to be heard over the screams of the coaches. But they began to find a rhythm speaking while the chatter from the sidelines was quietest.

That chatter — “Chin! Chin! Go!” Seton Hall Coach Tony Bozzella shouted out in a play call to his team — offered a fresh glimpse into the orchestrations of a college basketball game. Coaches instructed players, mumbled to assistants, and fumed at the referees.

“Every call is going against Seton Hall!” Bozzella seethed after a blocking call. “Every one. This is ridiculous. Ridiculous. I’m glad I’m miked up because this stinks!”

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St. John’s Coach Joe Tartamella on the sidelines during the N.C.A.A. tournament in March.CreditLM Otero/Associated Press

At halftime, viewers got a better sense of the styles of each team. In the St. John’s locker room, players sat in a tight U-formation around Coach Joe Tartamella, who spent his time in front of a whiteboard sketching out plays. On the other side, Bozzella remained outside his team’s locker room for 10 minutes as he huddled with his coaching staff in the hallway. With only a few minutes remaining, he entered the room to clapping from his team.

Viewers were treated to a tight, competitive game. With a little over two minutes left, and the game tied at 57, Bozzella made no effort to conceal what he wanted from his team.

“We’re running Princeton right now for Titi,” he told his players in the huddle, referring to guard LaTecia Smith. Seton Hall eventually won, 64-59.

Tartamella was so emotional in the closing quarter that a couple of curse words slipped into the broadcast. There were also some technical difficulties early on, including noisy audio signals for several minutes and the game clock’s disappearing for a bit.

However, by the second half, the production quality was cleaned up. After the game, Bozzella let the camera into the locker room ahead of him. “You’re going to like this,” he said. The room exploded with cheering and chanting.

Val Ackerman, the commissioner of the Big East Conference, said she believed television sports had long been headed in this direction, as fans clamor for more and more behind-the-scenes access. At the same time, women’s basketball telecasts have become so stagnant that ESPN chose to broadcast some first- and second-round N.C.A.A. tournament games remotely last season.

“I and others in women’s basketball have tried to figure out what we can do to keep this great sport vibrant,” said Ackerman, who was the first president of the W.N.B.A., from 1996 to 2005, before taking over the Big East in 2013.

“How it is expressed on TV is part of the story,” she said. “This appeals to me because it’s a chance for women’s basketball to take a leadership position in how the sport is being presented to fans.”

Ackerman said the league would assess whether to allow another broadcast like Friday’s in the future. But Entz said he did not consider it to be a stunt, indicating that, if all went smoothly, Fox Sports would almost certainly want to try it again.

“Viewers and people at home are expecting more access. They’re expecting to get closer to the game,” he said. “They want things they aren’t used to seeing.”

The live transmission of the coaches’ in-game commentary — be it strategy, encouragement, discipline or invective-laced tirades — is taking reality television to another level. It harks back to NBC’s attempt, in 1980, to broadcast an N.F.L. game without announcers, a decision that was considered a flop.

Scheer said he had floated the idea to Big East coaches several years ago and had been encouraged by their responses. Ackerman said she had needed to receive endorsements from Tartamella and Bozzella before approving the initiative.

After practice on Wednesday, Bozzella was adamant about the need for women’s basketball to break through on television channels already oversaturated with college basketball. He recalled the former Tennessee coach Pat Summitt’s willingness to try new things, such as the first women’s college game played outdoors, against Arizona State in 2000.

“Growing the game isn’t just doing a survey or a kids’ day or a clinic for 30 people,” he said. “How are we going to go outside the box? When faced with an opportunity like this, why say no?”

Bozzella said he had no plans to change his coaching style for the cameras. He said he had encouraged the players he was recruiting to watch the telecast.

“The game of basketball isn’t just the play you’re running,” Bozzella said. “There’s a lot of intensity, emotion, psychological play. A kid misses three shots, what is Coach B saying to the kid?”

What might be of greater concern is the point at which the cameras become too invasive, infringing on the privacy of coach-player relationships and turning a once-safe space — the locker room at halftime — into another fishbowl.

“Our locker room is very energetic, to say the least,” Seton Hall guard Kaity Healy said. “We’re probably going to act the same, because that’s how we play our game.”

Ackerman said before the game that she planned to attend, but that she expected to spend most of the time inside the production truck, watching it on television.

“This is a chance to show another side to what goes on during a game,” Ackerman said. “It’s a step that men’s basketball hasn’t taken yet, and our thought was, ‘Let’s let women’s basketball have a shot.’”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Push the Ball! Box Out! Get That, Viewers? (Fox Sports Hopes So.). Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe